Hunter Pets

From the latest patch notes:

• Tame Beast now tames pets to match the hunter's level, rather than 3 levels below.
• Bloodthirsty no longer generates Happiness.
• Carrion Feeder no longer restores Happiness.
• The Feed Pet ability now instantly heals 50% of the pet's health. Cannot be used in combat. Requires diet-appropriate food.
Guard Dog no longer causes Growl to generate additional Happiness.
• The Happiness/Pet Loyalty System has been removed. Hunters will no longer have to manage Happiness for their pets, and the previous damage bonus for pets being happy will now be baseline for all tamed pets.

I was rather dismayed when I saw these patch notes.

One of the things that Vanilla WoW did really well was emphasize the idea that a hunter pet was a separate entity from the hunter. You had to go out into the world and tame your pet from the wild, even the very first pet. The pet had it's own experience bar, and leveled separately. You had to keep your pet happy and feed it with the appropriate food. If your pet grew too unhappy, it would actually run away from you. The pet had a "loyalty" statistic that measured how attached it was to you.¹ You had to train your pet with new skills that you learned by taming other beasts.

There was this whole "tamagotchi"/virtual pet aspect to hunter pets at the start of WoW that was very attractive. It was a small mini-game within the class that didn't really have anything to do with combat or raiding or pvp. In many ways, that mini-game has been bled out from the class in the name of streamlining, and I think that is a real shame. The hunter pet has, more and more, become a mere extension of the hunter, rather than something with its own personality.

Obviously, some parts of the old system, particularly training new skills, were a little excessive. The pet talent trees are much better. And your pet running away from you was harsh, because feeding your pet wasn't exactly intuitive at level 10. But I think that rather than going in the current direction with pets, Blizzard should reconsider, and go in the opposite direction and play up the virtual pet aspect more.

If it was up to me, I would keep pet happiness in the game. Indeed, I would remove pet happiness from the talent trees, so your pet wouldn't automatically stay happy. Instead there would be more emphasis on feeding your pet and using the Mend Pet glyph to keep it happy. The hunter should actively control her pet's happiness.

I would also keep the 3 level difference on taming, to emphasize the separate personalities.

I would also not have the hunter start with a pet. Instead, the level 3 hunter class quest should be to tame your first pet from the wild. Though it would still be a guardian, like it is now.

I think Blizzard needs to slow down with its streamlining of classes. Not all inconveniences need to be eliminated. Sometimes the inconvenience adds something. Having to deal with pet happiness is sometimes an inconvenience, but in the long run it makes the hunter class more interesting.

1. Infamously captured in the Loyalty Level 6 controversy. For those who weren't around at the time, Loyalty Level 6 was the highest rank of loyalty your pet could attain. It was also the name of a piece of fan art that depicted a scantily-clad female tauren hunter hugging her pet lion. The WoW community--never high-minded at the best of times--immediately jumped to the most salacious conclusion.

A Clarification

I think Gevlon and Larisa may have read too much into my last post on RIFTS.

There are two different things: RIFTS the game; and rifts the mechanic. Unfortunately, they're named the same, which makes things a bit confusing.

When I said that "rifts are like popcorn", I was specifically referring to the mechanic, and not the game as a whole. You should not take that statement as an comment on the full game.

Gaming on a Mac?

Anyone out there raid on a Mac?

I think my current PC's motherboard is dying. Today I had to turn it off and on multiple times before it would "catch" and boot up. And when the motherboard goes, that's pretty much it for the machine, in my experience.

I was thinking about maybe indulging myself and getting a Macbook Pro, but I wonder if it will handle raiding okay, especially if the graphics are turned up enough to actually see the fire.

I used to have a Mac a few years ago, and WoW played decently enough back then, if I recall correctly. But then my apartment got broken into, and the Mac stolen, so I brought a relatively cheap PC to replace it.

The big disadvantage of Macs when it comes to gaming, of course, is that so few game companies actually make Mac versions of their games.

In any case, if anyone has recent experience on gaming with Macs, I'd love to hear from you.

Team or Zerg?

The blogosphere seems to be falling over themselves to proclaim the greatness of rifts in RIFTS. I, on the other hand, am feeling rather ambivalent about them.

The thing about rifts, I'm finding, is that there is no substance to them. A rift appears, you zerg it down, and loot falls out of the sky. No strategy, no tactics.

Is that all we want from our games?

The simplest 5-man is more interesting and contains more team play than any of the rifts I've participated in. I know it is fashionable to mock the tank/healer/dps Trinity, but at least in a Trinity group you're working together. There's a feeling of being part of a team that is completely missing in rifts.

For all that RIFTS makes joining public groups easy, there's no sense of teamwork at all. Most rifts are just everyone attacking the boss on their own, including it being a literal graveyard zerg when people die. Indeed, people talk less in Rift groups than they do in WoW's Dungeon Finder!

If you don't act as a group, are you really in a group?

Kind of honestly, the only thing that changes if you join a Rift public group is that the healers might find it easier to heal people with the group/raid UI. But of course, for that to be useful there actually needs to be healers who heal, which is somewhat rare.

That's not to say that they're not somewhat fun. Rifts are like popcorn. They're light and tasty at first. But they're ultimately unsatisfying when compared to the hearty meal of a small team dungeon, or the rich banquet that is raiding.

WoW Videos: Heavy in Your Arms

Saw this video the other day, and loved it. It's by Harmon Productions.

I like the song (Heavy in Your Arms, by Florence and the Machine), and the video works perfectly with it. It has an interesting storyline that is somewhat out of the norm.

As well, the cut in the church to the wedding is absurdly brilliant.

Gathering Professions

One of the trends I really dislike in modern WoW is the idea that raiding characters should have two crafting professions and zero gathering professions. This is done because the crafting profession perks are generally more powerful and flexible than the perks granted by the gathering professions.

I don't really play alts, so having a gathering alt is out. What I like best about crafting is the "self-sufficiency" of it. Of making your own gear or items from scratch. And this current trend cuts directly against that.

I was talking to a friend, Tharok, and we were discussing crafting in Rift. In Rift, each crafting profession requires materials from two gathering professions. For example, Armorsmithing mainly requires materials from Mining, but some recipes also use leather from Butchering. Rift does give you 3 profession slots, so you can take both gathering professions. Or you could take 2 crafting professions (like Armorsmithing and Weaponsmithing) and the main gathering profession (Mining). Then you would just buy extra materials from the Auction House when necessary.

In any case, Tharok made a suggestion that is brilliant in its simplicity: why not eliminate gathering professions altogether?.

The idea would be that if you take a profession like Blacksmithing or Jewelcrafting, you would automatically get the ability to mine ore. This immediately simplifies professions immensely. Of course, you would reduce the number of professions you could take to one or two.

There are already a couple of professions in WoW that work this way: Enchanting and Tailoring. Enchanting generates its own raw materials, as does tailoring. There's no extra gathering profession. And honestly, those two professions are fine on their own. They aren't hurt, or are less fun, by the lack of a gathering profession.

The counter-argument against this idea is that the gathering professions are necessary to the economy in some fashion. But I'm not sure that this is the case. Cloth and enchanting materials are still sold and traded on the AH.

And even if it did hurt the economy, I would prefer this change because it makes crafting simpler and more useful (and maybe even more fun) for each individual player.

To Rift or not to Rift?

The Rift beta is over, and the head start launches tomorrow. I'm trying to decide whether to subscribe for a bit or not.

In a lot of ways, my decision has surprisingly little to do with the game itself. Rift is a good game. Instead of the title question, the real question I'm struggling with is:

To tank/heal or not to tank/heal?

My favorite part of these games is group content. Group content needs a tank and a healer. I highly doubt that Rift has done anything that will make those two roles more prevalent.

But none of the tank or healer souls really attracted my attention. They all seemed rather boring. So I'm left with a conundrum. If I want to indulge in group play, my best option is to roll a tank or healer. But I'm not very enthusiastic about the tank/healer souls, and the dps souls seem more interesting. But if I go dps, I resign myself to a poor grouping experience.

Edit: To clarify, I'm talking about the time wasted looking for tank/heals before starting, not the actual experience once the group has been assembled.

The one build I actually liked was a Warrior Champion/Beastmaster/Riftstalker build. Two-handed weapons with a charge, a pet and a little elemental damage. But you know that build will be pretty pointless in group play.

User Interface Windowing

I was playing the Rift beta when the following sequence of events happened, and got me thinking.

I usually put my crafting skills on the right-side action bar. Rift crafting skills have a "disenchant" option (which is pretty neat). For example, armorsmiths can "salvage" armor to get materials to make more armor. So I added a right action bar and put the Salvage button on it as I would in WoW. I then opened my bags to find some armor I wanted to break down. To my surprise, the bags opened in the same spot that they normally do, overlapping the right action bar and hiding the Salvage button.

This, of course, made Salvaging a rather tricky option. I figured out that you could move the bags around, but sadly, I couldn't get them to perfectly line up anymore. So now when I open my bags, they display in a rather raggedy manner, but at least they're not obsuring the action bar.

I started wondering why something like this never happens in WoW. I realized that--for all that WoW and Rift are very similar--the default WoW interface uses a completely different windowing system/metaphor than Rifts.

The default WoW interface uses tiling windows. For the most part, there is only one plane, and all interface elements exist on that plane. Nothing overlaps, and if you open a new window, the other windows either shift position or close in order to accommodate the new window.

(The preceding paragraph is not strictly true. There's really two planes for the default user interface. The lower one (which can be obscured) has the group/raid health bars, the quest tracker, and the small zone map.)

Rift, on the other hand, uses an overlapping windowing system. Interface elements can overlap and be moved around, or brought to the foreground at different times. But the price you pay here is that if you want to see two elements at once, you often have to rearrange things yourself.

Just a small technical observation. I think I like the tiling system better for a default game UI. It's probably more work, making sure that all the elements tile nicely, especially related elements. But everything that is active is immediately available to the user, without them having to move elements around to see information.

Rift: First Impressions, Part II

Played a little bit more yesterday. Got a couple levels with my Warrior, and tried a Defiant Bladedancer/Nightblade/Assassin Rogue. Still very low level with both of them.

More on Abilities

The soul trees are pretty interesting. Generally, each tier has about 5 "soul-specific" talent points, and 5 "generic" talent points. That way, if you don't use the soul-specific abilities, you can still climb the tree by investing in the generic talent points.

So far, what I've found is that about 70% of the abilities I use come from the primary soul, about 30% from the secondary soul, and I use one buff or one ability from the tertiary soul.

AoE looting

AoE looting is amazing! You loot one dead mob, and all the surrounding dead mobs you can loot are looted at the same time. All the items appear in one window, and is essentially treated as one transaction.

This change is definitely worth stealing.

Rifts

Rifts are random events that occur fairly often. A portal opens, and enemies spew out. There are several waves, and the UI tracks your progress much like a Public Quest in Warhammer. There's a little contribution meter that tracks your participation, and when the rift is closed, you get a loot bag containing some random items. Mostly special currency to purchase gear, but also crafting items and some sort of trophy items that you collect sets of. Don't really know what you do with the trophy items.

As well, when you first enter the rift area, there's an option to join a public group, and you get dropped into a raid with other people.

I rather like the rifts. They're random, which makes them a nice break from solo questing. You do your quests, see a rift form near you and join up and beat down the rift. Then you go back to questing. It's a nice change of pace that doesn't require a lot to set up or even a great deal of commitment.

I think it might also make healing and tanking a little more attractive. You get a small dose of group content every so often, which is your main purpose as a healer or tank, and you don't really feel the pressure to go DPS to make questing easier.

Now the downsides of rifts is that, so far, they are essentially a giant zerg. There's not a lot of tactics or strategy involved. But then again, this is low-level, and things can change at higher levels.

Rift: First Impressions

I took a look at the Rift Open Beta yesterday. Here are my impressions. I didn't get very far, only to about level 7 or so.

Rift is very similar to World of Warcraft and similar quest-driven fantasy MMOs. Trion has deliberately made the interface very familar to WoW players, using much the same hotkeys and layout. This is a positive, in my view.

Class System

Rift's major innovation is its class system. You start by picking a fundamental archetype: Warrior, Cleric, Mage, or Rogue. Then you pick up to three sub-classes, called souls, which focus on different aspects of the base archetype.

It's an interesting system, and in a lot of ways is opposite to the direction that WoW has taken. WoW characters focus on a specific specialization: Holy Paladin versus Retribution Paladin. In contrast, Rift is aiming at the combination of souls taken.

We will see how successful they are. WoW's drive for specialization was driven by the playerbase, because it produced optimal results.

I created a Malthusian (human) Warrior. I choose the Paladin/Warlord/Void Knight souls, pretty much creating a sword-and-shield tank.

Abilities

Gaining abilities in Rift depends on your souls. Each soul is like a talent tree you can invest talent points in. But each talent tree also has a "root" line of abilities. As you invest points in the talent tree, new abilities are unlocked along the root line. So if you put more points in the Paladin tree than the Warlord tree, you unlock more Paladin abilities than Warlord abilities.

Abilities themselves are pretty standard MMO fare so far. Some have cooldowns, debuffs, buffs, reactive abilities etc. Warrior use a combo-point system with generators and finishers.

All in all, it's a very clean system. However, there are a few issues. First, you still have to buy ranks in each ability, so you have to go to a trainer every so often. It seems like this is just extra complexity. Unlocking abilities through talent points was enough, and I think it would work better if your abilities just automatically scaled with your level.

Second, there's a lot of front-loaded complexity. Each soul comes with starter abilities. For example, I have 3 different basic combo-point generator at level 7, and about 5 different buffs. I'm using the Warlord generator and a paladin finisher, and just dropped the other two off my bars. But the sheer number of buttons available at level 7 is a bit overwhelming.

Finally, warriors theoretically have a resource bar, called Power. But so far, Power seems to regenerate faster than I can spend it, so you're really limited by the global cooldown and ability cooldowns. The resource doesn't seem to matter.

Graphics

First, the game is very responsive. No input lag or discontinuity between pressing buttons and results. Animations are solid and fun to watch.

The graphics are pretty decent, but they draw from the green/brown/gray "realistic" palette and thus are not very vibrant or crisp.

As well, apparently Trion belongs to the camp that believes that female plate armor does not need to cover vital areas like the chest or stomach. At least they aren't in high heels, though.

In-game, the performance is very good. I'm not 100% certain that I have the graphics set right, but I set them to Good and everything plays well with a decent framerate.

Oddly though, my system can't seem to handle the cutscenes. I get massive framerate stutters during cutscenes. It's really weird considering that in-game performance is excellent.

Conclusions

Rift seems like a pretty decent game. It's pretty polished and plays well so far. I haven't really gotten into the Rifts part, which seem to be like Warhammer's public quests, or instancing or anything really advanced.

If you're looking for something majorly different than WoW, than Rift is probably not for you. But personally, I'm a fan of choosing one thing to change and then doing a great job with that single change, and that is what Trion is aiming for with their class system.

Light of Dawn

Well, Light of Dawn may or may not transfer via Beacon of Light.

Yeah, I don't know what's going on.

Ask Coriel: Priest or Paladin?

A reader asks:

I have a paladin and a priest both. I recently came back to the game for the expansion. I have taken my paladin up to 83 and recently spent some time on my priest leveling him up as well. The other day I hear someone mention that he has bailed on his 85 priest because they are the worst healers at 85 right now.

With your experience on the paladin and your obviously spending a lot of time evaluating the paladin class and raiding. Do you have any quick thoughts on paladin versus priest healing? I want my primary role to be a healer, its what I enjoy.

Well, I don't really have a lot of experience with priests, especially the new 4.0 priest. But in my guild, one of our best healers is a Holy priest. From what I've seen, priests are still a strong healing class.

I would probably say that priests, especially Holy, are a more complex than paladins, and have a larger healing toolbox. Paladins have a bit more survivability and have more non-healing tools like Hand of Salvation, Freedom, Hammer of Justice, and now Rebuke.

Priests also have a small advantage in that they have two healing styles to choose from, Holy or Disc. But paladins get to hit things with a giant two-handed mace, which is never to be sneered at.

They're both good healing classes. I would suggest that you pick whichever one you like playing best, or whether you think plate armor and shields looks better than cloth armor and staves.

Any thoughts from readers, especially those who've played both classes?

Guild LF A Couple Healers

My guild, Ad Infinitum, is looking for a few more healers. We're 10/12 normal at the moment, missing Nefarian and Al'Akir.

We raid 3 nights a week: Wednesday, Sunday, Monday from 7pm to 11pm PST.

If this sounds like something you'd be interested in, we'd love to have you put in an application.

If you're not a healer, feel free to apply as well, we're always on the lookout for good players. If you have any questions about the guild, I can answer in the comments, or you can email me at rverghes@gmail.com.

Sheep and Wolves

It's something of an article of faith among MMO literati that hardcore PvP games with consequences cannot really thrive. The line of thought goes something like:

In a PvP game, some people are wolves and everyone else end up as sheep. Who is going to pay to be a sheep?

I can't really disagree with that argument. I rather doubt people will pay to be killed in PvP, with consequences like losing gear. But what if the idea was flipped?

If people won't pay to be sheep, will people pay to be wolves?

There are a lot of Free-2-Play games running around. What if one of the things for sale was the ability to attack and kill other characters? I.e. normally, players can't initiate attacks on other players. But if you subscribe, you can attack other players, and they can fight back. I'm talking full PvP with looting rights, a la original Ultima Online.

The thing is, in a F2P game, the players who don't pay primarily exist to entertain the the people who shell out money. To provide people to play with, to fill out dungeon groups, to create an economy that the subscriber can participate in.

It's merely a step further to suggest that, when it comes to PvP in an F2P game, the non-payers exist to be sheep for the subscriber wolves.

And hey, if you don't like being ganked, maybe you could pay more to be immune to PvP attacks.

Gearscore for Guilds

If you look at the new Raid and Guild Leadership forums, you'll see that there's a fair amount of antipathy for Blizzard's new guild levelling scheme. There's a lot of small guild leaders bemoaning the fact that everyone wants perks, so they join the higher level guilds which have unlocked more perks.

While there's probably a little bit of perk-hunting going on, I think that most people are opting for higher-level guilds for a reason closer to the reasons behind Gearscore.

Gearscore was a weak proxy for raid experience which in turn is a weak proxy for effectiveness. People used Gearscore because they wanted to have successful pick-up raids, and didn't really have any other quick and easy method to evaluate strangers.

In the same way, people join guilds for new opportunities. Opportunities to meet new people, do new content, earn a high PvP rank, etc. People leave guilds when they feel they can't obtain those new opportunities.

Guild levels are a weak proxy for activity, which is a weak proxy for opportunities. It's not a big stretch to say that a Level 13 guild is more active than a Level 4 guild. There are probably more people playing regularly and actually doing stuff in the high level guild than the low level guild. And in turn, there's probably more opportunity to do stuff in an active guild than in an inactive guild.

Now, of course this may not be strictly true. For example, the raid team could be fully established, with no room for you. Or the players could be very clique-ish. Or maybe the tenor of guild chat is offensive to you.

But on the whole, that Level 13 guild probably offers more opportunities than the Level 4 guild. So people prefer to join the higher level guilds, even though they are not motivated solely by perks.

Of course, though, this leaves the same problem as Gearscore: how do you bootstrap yourself to a higher level? You need people to become an active guild, but people won't join you until you become an active guild.

I don't really have any solutions for that part.

Odd PuG Group

Had a rather interesting pickup group the other day. It was heroic Blackrock Caverns.

I zoned in and joined Tank1, Dps1, Dps2, and Dps3. They were all from the same guild. We kill the first boss, good group, all DPS over 9k. I'm thinking it will be a quick clean run.

Then Tank1 leaves the group. Tank2 joins from LFD. Then Dps1, Dps2, and Dps3 leave as well. They are replaced by Dps4, Dps5, and Dps6.

I'm not really certain what's going on, but we continue on to Corla. We wipe once, because it's Dps4's first time with the beams, and he screws up. Dps5 and Dps6 leave the group, and are replaced with Dps7 and Dps8.

We kill Corla cleanly and move on. We wipe once on Karsh Steelbender, I think because the tank didn't pull the boss out of the fire fast enough. Tank2 leaves, followed by Dps7 and Dps8.

Tank3 joins along with Dps9 and Dps10. We kill Karsh Steelbender, and then kill the end boss, skipping Beauty.

It was a really odd run. There were only two wipes, one per boss, so it wasn't like a wipefest. Yet I went through 3 tanks and 10 dps to complete that run.

Direction of Holy Paladin Mana

I'm not really happy with the direction Holy Paladin mana seems to be going.

In the run up to Cataclysm, Blizzard said that they were aiming to make mana matter. That a good healer would conserve mana by healing efficiently. By using the right heal at the right time. By reducing overheal.

I liked that idea. It seemed good, a way to get back to the basics of healing.

But paladins seem to be going in a different direction. Rather than worrying about healing efficiently, paladin mana management seems to be boiling down to:

1. How good are you at Judging on cooldown?


2. How good are you at hitting Divine Plea on cooldown?


3. How good are you at abusing Holy Power generation via Tower of Radiance or Blessed Life or 1-pt WoG/Protector of the Innocent/Beacon Transfer or even Crusader Strike?

Gimmick. Gimmick. Gimmick.

All I want to do is heal. I don't see what was so wrong with letting us heal without having to worry about all this other stuff.

If I had my way, I wouldn't raise the cost of paladin heals by 10%. I'd be axing Divine Plea, mana return on Seal of Insight, Tower of Radiance, and Blessed Life.

If you want costs to matter, you can't keep putting in mechanics that evade costs.

Quick Note On Random PuGs

I don't know why people are so down on random LFD groups. I get random groups with four people sporting [The Light of Dawn] title.

And even better, none of them wore plate, so I got all the plate DPS loot.

*grin*

My Holy Setup and Macros

Alright, I've been bouncing around Holy playstyle for a bit now, and I think I've come up with a setup that's making me happy. This is what I'm currently doing in game. I'm not 100% sure it's what is recommended by Elitist Jerks, et al. Last time I looked at EJ, they seem to have gotten distracted by trying to find the maximum possible rate of Holy Power generation. Which, to me, is sort of missing the forest for the trees.

So this is my current setup.

Talent Spec

Current spec and Glyphs: 31/5/5

I take the Word of Glory points, skip Tower of Radiance, and put 1 point in Blessed Life.

Spells

On the Word of Glory side, WoG is really good for tank healing. Even if it does less healing than Light of Dawn, it's much easier to keep a tank up with it. I put Beacon on one tank, and mainly focus the other tank.

Healing-wise, my seal is Seal of Insight naturally. My main rotation is 3pt WoG (or LoD if need more raid healing), then Holy Shock, then a HS-DL macro:

/castsequence Holy Light, Holy Light, Divine Light

What I've found is that if I only use HL as a filler, I spend almost no mana, but it seems to need a little more punch. If I try and use DL as a filler, I go dry very fast. The 2:1 ratio of HL:DL seems to drain mana at a nice rate, while doing a solid amount of healing.

Of course, if you need to bust out DL or FoL for intense healing you still can. I've macro'd Guardian of Ancient Kings with DL, so that the emergency heals start together.

/cast Guardian of Ancient Kings
/cast Divine Light

I've also macro'd my trinkets and Divine Protection to Holy Shock, to get maximum use out of them.

The last macro I use is Holy Radiance and Divine Favor or Avenging Wrath.

/castrandom Divine Favor, Avenging Wrath
/cast Holy Radiance

What this does is trigger one of Divine Favor or Avenging Wrath. It casts whichever one is not on cooldown, or randomly picks one if both are available. I find it's good for spreading out your CDs, while still ensuring that your Holy Radiances are boosted.

Edit: As people have indicated in the comments, this does not work as I intended. The /castrandom can choose the spell on CD, and if that happens then it won't choose a different spell until it casts the original spell.

So that's healing spells. Also don't forget Blessing of Sacrifice and Judge often. I definitely need to improve the amount I judge.

Stats and Gear

Main stat is Intellect. Intellect flask and food.

Secondary stat order: Spirit > Haste > Crit > Mastery.

Reforge Mastery then Crit to Spirit then Haste. Enchants focuses on stats as presented, but get Run Speed to boots.

For gems, I think the stat bonuses are worth it this time around, so red Int gems, orange Int/Haste gems, and blue Int/Spi gems.

Personally, I don't worry about specific gear pieces, just upgrade whenever possible.

Conclusions

So that's my current Holy setup for raids. It seems pretty decent so far.

Heroic Difficulty

Judging from the comments on the last post, I think some people may have misconstrued my sentiments about heroic difficulty. Here's my real thoughts:

Heroics need to be nerfed.

Just so you understand, I've pugged every single heroic. I had full i346 before I got a single piece of raid loot.

Heroics are hard and challenging. But they need to be nerfed.

Why? Because of the space heroics currently occupy in the game. Heroics are a necessary stepping stone to raids. If people fall off the path in heroics, before they ever get to raiding, raiding will be a disaster this expansion. What's the point of 4.1 with new raid tiers if the majority of the playerbase is struggling with heroics?

The decision to release raids with Cataclysm was a total mistake. If raids had not released, heroics would not be a stepping stone, they would be the current endgame. And they are pitch-perfect difficulty to be endgame for a couple months.

But with the route Blizzard took, heroics are not endgame, they're a mere stepping stone to endgame. And they are too difficult for a stepping stone, given the probable timespan to the next major patch. Thus they need to be nerfed to match the proper difficulty for their placement.